


salt dried

by toadsage



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Setting - England, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Police, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cop Sasuke, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Gang Member Suigetsu, Lawyer Karin, M/M, Underage Drug Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-05-27 19:01:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15031211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toadsage/pseuds/toadsage
Summary: “Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?” she prompts. She’s a crappy lawyer, why didn’t she read Suigetsu’s fucking case files or whatever? Half his fucking history was in the news, anyway. Crappy fucking lawyer if she didn’t know the bare minimum.Suigetsu and his sad fucking life story is not the fucking issue here. His issue is the stupid Romeo & Juliet schtick he's got with one of his customers. His issue is his stupid lawyer and his stupid life story and his stupid dreams. His issue is that not only is he friends with a cop, he's stupidly, desperately, in something with him. He just doesn't know how to put it yet.





	1. piece.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hongmunmu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hongmunmu/gifts).



> I'm posting this hoping posting it will kick my ass into gear about finishing it. Also I will singlehandedly fill the Sasuke/Suigetsu tag myself if I fucking have to.  
> This fic is inspired by [ these pics ](https://hongmunmu.tumblr.com/tagged/cop-and-criminal) by Raz. They're amazing & I love them.

“Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?” she prompts. She’s a crappy lawyer, why didn’t she read Suigetsu’s fucking case files or whatever? Half his fucking history was in the news, anyway. Crappy fucking lawyer if she didn’t know the bare minimum.

“Well, my ma and pa shagged and I was born. There, you happy?” he spits back, still not looking in her eyes.

“That’s a start,” she continues, her voice as even as ever. They probably gave her to him ‘cuz they know he’s going to be a fucking trouble case or whatever. Sasuke probably doesn’t got a bitch like this, “Where are they now?”

“Dead. Or good as, I dunno. Don’t fuckin’ remember them.”

“You don’t remember them?”

“Who took care of you, then, Suigetsu? If not for your ma and pa.”

“Brother.”

“Can you tell me a bit about him?”

“Why should I,  _ Kah-rin? _ ”

“Because it will help me understand you better, so I can argue your case, Suigetsu,” she speaks to him like a fucking primary school teacher. Suigetsu’s had to deal with the same cunts his whole life, and now he’s gotta fucking deal with another fucking one.

Sick of women like them, he is, sick of the way they hold themselves like they’re better because they didn’t grow up on the estate or because they went to fucking university. They’re gonna give him time, anyway, a huge enough chunk of his life that he’d probably be better off killing himself right now.

Suigetsu heard the stats in juvie all the same. Poor, sorry fucks like him just get out to reoffend and get put right the fuck back where they belong.

Suigetsu’s sick of playing this fucking game.

Suigetsu’s brother’s name was Mangetsu. Mangetsu was bright, brighter than Suigetsu or anyone else Suigetsu knew growing up. Mangetsu had intelligence and honour and bravery and all that good King Arthur shit. If he had a better lot, if he wasn’t saddled with Sui’s sorry ass, he would’ve probably had a good life.

He was smart, like uni smart. Canny, like banker canny. He coulda been the kind of fuck in a suit who took the tube to Canary Wharf every day and worked in a high rise and made more money than he needed and invested it in bonds or whatever the fuck and had a wife and a kid and the kid goes to private school and doesn’t need to take a loan to go to university or whatever. He could’ve been that guy. Maybe. If Sui wasn’t in the picture.

But Sui was, and so Mangetsu wasn’t.

“Mangetsu was in a gang,” Suigetsu says. It’s true, it’s probably down there in the government’s files like the rest of Suigetsu’s life, that Mangetsu was in the Seven Swordsman and he killed more people than he needed to or the government was happy with, and Mangetsu was fucking good at it too. The Seven were honourable, good to kids and shit, much better than what Suigetsu got mixed in, anyway. Suigetsu only remembers good shit about Mangetsu and his friends.

“They were raided,” and Suigetsu remembers this clearly too, remembers his brother bundling him into a closet and telling him not to make a sound and the sound of gunfire and hiding his lanky fifteen-year-old-body under a pile of winter coats and hoping they didn’t check very thoroughly.

He remembers, “Mangetsu was shot,” a body lying in its own blood on his shitty council floor, seeping into the ratty Ikea carpet Mangetsu insisted Suigetsu hoover once a week.

He remembers, “Mangetsu left me a bunch of money,” for uni, the will said, to keep Suigetsu on his feet for long enough for him to become a decent man, a good member of society, a godfearing suitwearing whitepretending English man, not like Mangetsu’s dumb paki ass. “I’m not even fucking Pakistani. I’m fucking Sri Lankan,” he says, and he doesn’t make sense anymore. He doesn’t ever make any fucking sense when he talks about this shit. “All that cash, god, he had a fucking lot. Written a last will and testament too, had it witnessed and everything. Not that it mattered or nothin’ anyway. Wanted me to be a good fucking member of society.”

Suigetsu was mad, he was fifteen and his brother, his whole reason for living was shot to death in front of him and bled out on the kitchen carpet and Suigetsu didn’t even get a proper fucking funeral for him or nothin’, just threw his body in the Thames and watched it have a tiny segment on the news a week later. No one fuckin’ cared that Suigetsu’s whole world had been destroyed, broken like a delicate little flower that floated onto the road and got run over. No one cared, so, “I took that cash ‘n bought a piece. A really fuckin’ nice piece.” And a shit ton of smack.

“A piece?” the fuckin’ lawyer asks like she’s an idiot. Prissy bitch.

“A fucking  _ gun,  _ keep up. Bought a gun.”

Being fifteen and the sole provider to yourself on a council estate and having barely passed your GCSEs didn’t give you many options. Being yourself and all, being what you knew and all, there were few options for a kid who had a gun and his wits and not much else.

That’s where Orochimaru comes into the picture, followed closely by Sasuke fucking Uchiha.

Things you don’t know about Orochimaru: where he’s from (dude has a fucking imperceptible accent); what exactly he wants from you; what his first name is; where his morals are.

Things you do know about Orochimaru: he will unscrupulously hire kids; in fact, he loves hiring kids (you don’t dwell on that bit and hope it works out); and he pays good money.

He pays money that edges on the side of too good to be true.

You don’t care, because he keeps you in food money and rent money and electricity money and clothing money and weed money. Not many other barely-homeless fifteen year olds get to say that much about themselves, have that much to their names.

You have enough to teach you how to cook from Tesco brand pasta and sauce and tinned curry and you make do. You think Mangetsu would be proud of you, after he got over being so mad that you dropped out and started doing all this shit. You’re the man of the house now, and you’re being real fucking responsible.

Sasuke fucking Uchiha is not like you.

Apparently, he has a mate on the estate but you’ve never seen this mate. This kid is a tourist, you’ve seen them before. They walk and talk the same, trying too hard to be  _ real,  _ but they learnt all their reallness from the t.v. so it don’t come out right in the end. It’s sad, and Suigetsu knows what an easy mark looks like. 

“How much for an eighth?” Sasuke asks this time, and you give him a big smile, all shark-like. You learnt your trading technique from  _ Jaws. _

“Forty quid,” you say, because Sasuke’s an idiot and one time he actually gave you that much.

“No,” Sasuke says, and he doesn’t smile. You’ve never seen him smile. You don’t really know much about him because he doesn’t talk much. Just leaves to go find his mate and then he disappears from your life for a couple weeks. You don’t know why he comes around anymore. 

“Okay,” you say, because you don’t negotiate. Badass motherfuckers like you don’t negotiate. 

“I’m gonna find my friend now,” Sasuke says, and you nod. You don’t say anything. 

Sasuke leaves, and he doesn’t look back when he walks away. He doesn’t care about you or anything. (Why do you care about him?) 


	2. eighth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hehe. take this babey. 
> 
> also, this chapter contains casual use of some homophobic, anti-asian, and ableist slurs. it's about teenage boys in the 90s. dont @ me.

“And then what?” she asks, and Suigetsu fucking hates her voice. She’s so annoying, she’s dressed like what a porno thinks a hooker looks like, and you’d like to have hate-sex with her if you weren’t mostly committed to someone else and also she didn’t look like her pussy stinks of misanthropy. 

“Then I didn’t see him for a while, I guess,” Suigetsu says, but that’s not entirely true. Well, it is, but you left out the most important part of the story of you and Sasuke at seventeen which maybe is unhelpful to your case, but you don’t want to share it. That bit of your history is  _ yours  _ and you’d rather be locked up for life than share it. 

(Maybe not for life. Suigetsu does have shit he’d rather be doing on the outside.) 

 

“Hey,” Sasuke says, ‘cuz he’s super imaginative. Today Suigetsu caught him before he left the complex, coming out of someone’s apartment and heading towards the tube station. 

“Hey,” Suigetsu says, ‘cuz Sasuke’s hair is tousled just… right today. He looks cool. He looks a bit upset. It’s cool. 

“Got anything stronger than the usual today?” Sasuke asks. 

“Bad day?” Suigetsu asks, y’know, ‘cuz he’s real empathetic like that.

Sasuke gives Suigetsu a look, staring deep into his eyes like somehow he can divine the nature of Suigetsu’s thoughts from them, and says “I’m a homosexual,” like it’s a challenge to Suigetsu’s very nature.

 

You, being seventeen at the time and never having met a real life homosexual in your life, don’t really know how to react. “Do you have AIDS?” you ask.

Sasuke punches you in the face. It really hurts. He’s such a weedy little motherfucker, you didn’t think he actually knew how to throw a punch, or that he could do it well. 

“What the  _ fuck _ , dude,” you hiss, clutching your eye socket and hopping back a step.

“Guess if I have AIDS you’ll find out soon fucking enough,” he swears and spits at you for good measure. Damn. Weren’t queers meant to be pussies? 

“Jesus fuck, okay, fine, whatever dude,” you swear, and you wonder if he really did just give you AIDS. That’d be a great fucking way to die, beaten up by a queer while selling drugs.

“God,” he says, and shakes his head. He starts walking away. You notice his accent. It’s really thick sometimes, moreso when he’s upset. It’s not usually strong enough for you to pick up, but you can hear it now. 

“Where you from?” you ask him, and he stops and turns around and gives you this  _ look,  _ and you didn’t know people’s faces could look sarky until his does. 

 

He points to his face, sticking out his tongue a little bit and looking annoyed. You like his face. He’s got a lot of like, acne and shit, but you can blank it out a bit and then it looks nice. He’s got the kind of face that’ll be hotter in a couple years. You know a lotta people like that. 

“What,” he says, “never seen a chinky fag before?” 

“What?” you say. 

“Clearly,” he says it slowly, like you’re dumb, and maybe you’re a little dumb but you’re not a fucking spastic, okay?

“Clearly what?”   
“Clearly you’ve never met a Chinese homosexual before.”

“Is that what the Chinese sound like?” You don’t really have Chinese friends or anything but you know some people around, and they don’t sound like Sasuke. 

“Are you playing dumb or are you really this stupid?” he asks you, and you roll your eyes. You’re really that stupid. “I’m from fuckin’ Belfast.” 

“Oh.” You don’t know where that is. You’ve never been outside London, not even for a holiday or nothin’. Mangetsu once took you to look at Hamley’s on Regent Street and that’s pretty much the most exotic place you’ve ever been. “I’m Sri Lankan,” you say, “I mean, my family was, I guess. I don’t really know much about it. Born and raised here.”

“Cool,” he says.

“Cool,” you say. 

 

“Got any crack or anyt’in’?” he says, and it sounds funny ‘cuz he doesn’t say the ‘th’ in anything, he just says it like  _ tin.  _ Got any tin?

“Nah,” you say, ‘cuz you don’t sell that stuff. And even if you did you wouldn’t sell it to little rich kids like him. It’s like, not ethical or something. Mangetsu wouldn’t have liked it, and you know at least if you’re not doing everything that he would have wanted, you can do one or two things. 

“Oh,” he says.

“Got some fuckin’ oxy, though, if you don’t want weed,” you say, because Orochimaru just gave you a new stock of pills and you’ll give it to him on the cheap. 

 

You want to be his friend, you realise. He’s cool. You don’t really know why, and you not it’s not because he’s street-smart (‘cuz he’s not) nor ‘cuz of the money he clearly has. He just has this…  _ energy.  _ You like it. You want to be the friend he visits on the estate. 

 

“Cool. Take that, I guess. And an eighth,” he adds, and hands you a wad of cash. You count it, makin sure it’s enough. Sixty quid. Damn. He’s loaded. You give him a quarter and count out a baggie of pills and you give it to him, all slick like. 

“Cool. Enjoy that.” 

“Yeah, I will,” he says, and he looks at you almost like he’s smiling. You could have  _ sworn  _ that was a smile. 

 

That’s the first time Suigetsu ever met a homosexual. He kept that smile for a rainy day. 

 

“So how did you meet him next?” she asks, adjusting her glasses and crossing her legs at the ankles like some sort of princess, but her tits are nearly coming out of her shirt and were it any other time you would have hit on her twice. She’s hot in the scary way, like your maths teacher was before you dropped out. 

“I didn’t see him for a long time, nothin’ much from when I was eighteen ‘til I was twenty three. He had some sort of fight, maybe, or the kid on the estate moved out, I don’t know. He just stopped comin’ and it’s not like I had much to communicate with him or anything back then. I’m not proud of it, but,” Suigetsu says, but it’s more than just being ashamed of the way his life is. Was. 

 

Funnily enough, a really good grift has turned out to be attending AA meetings and getting to know people, and then hanging out before and after the meetings, ready to sell. Letting people know you sell. Honestly, it’s low-hanging fruit, and pretty dishonourable, but desperation means Sui can hike the price up and pocket a difference that he doesn’t report to Orochimaru. Funnily enough, Suigetsu Hoozuki is kind of a really shitty person. 

 

It’s not like he immediately recognises Sasuke. He just notices a silent, slouchy presence in the back of the room, someone who looks like they’re there but not of their own volition. Probably barely a month sober. Probably just need a nudge to get them in the right direction. 

 

“Hey,” Suigetsu says to him, lighting a fag the second he gets out of the fucking meeting, sick of the stale tea-biscuits they serve to hide the way everyone’s hands shake or something, “you’re new.” 

“Not new to you, Sui,” the guy says. He just knows Sui’s name out of fuckin’ nothin, like a magician. 

“How the fuck do you know my name?” 

“C’mon, you fuckin’ wanker,” he says, pulling a pack of fags out of his pocket and lighting up as well, “don’t say you don’t remember me.” 

Sui doesn’t say shit. 

“Jesus fuckin’ wept. Seriously? You ask a motherfucker whether or not he’s got AIDS and then forget all about him? Cheers mate.” 

 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah, oh.” 

“Sasuke, wow,” Suigetsu says, surprised. They live in the same city, he supposes, but he didn’t think Sasuke would ever come into his life again. “You stopped coming.” 

“I mean, yeah, that’s a symptom of alcoholism, but you didn’t need to point it out, mate.” 

He sounds different to the way you remember. You don’t say that. “I mean, to the estate.”

He huffs, exhaling a bright cloud of smoke into the frigid night air, “I know what you mean. I just don’t want to talk about that.”

“Is it because I called you a fag?” you ask, because it’s something that’s been weighing on your mind for months. Maybe years. 

“Trust me, it’s got nothing to do with you calling me a fag. You can rest easy.” 

“Thanks,” Suigetsu says, although he doesn’t really know why. He knows that’s not the correct response.

 

Sasuke gives you a wan smile, and you were right. He did grow up to be hot, his face all strong jawed and small-eyed and high cheekboned. He’s bulked out, way more than you, and put on what seems like another foot from what you remember. He looks tired, like he’s aged double what he should have from the time you saw him last. You feel bad about it. You missed him. Sasuke drops his cigarette to the concrete, smushes it out with the heel of his boot, flicks his keys around his finger with a loud jangle, and winks at you. 

 

He gets in his car and drives away from your life, once again. 

 

Suigetsu gets the tube home. 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, find me @toadsages on tumblr :D


End file.
